July 2009 MMA News Archive - Page 5

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It's not a done deal yet, but it looks like Jay Hieron might be the winner of the "Who Gets To Face Nick Diaz on 8/15" sweepstakes. Hieron beat out Phil Baroni to replace Joe Riggs according to a GracieFighter.com report. No immediate confirmation from Strikeforce, so as always, stay tuned.

The demise of Affliction Entertainment will not simply go away after one press release. The fact of the matter is that they had a lot of partners involved. One of those partners was Mark Cuban's HDNet television network, which was scheduled to air the undercard of the now-canceled "Affliction: Trilogy."

Affliction became the newest member on Friday of a group of which it wanted no part.
It joined BodogFIGHT, the World Fighting Alliance, the International Fight League, EliteXC and others on the list of mixed martial arts promotions that were backed by big money, big hype and big dreams before ending up as financial nightmares and failing.
From Affliction's start, the odds were greatly against success because of several major flaws in its business model.
The first was the outdated belief that heavyweight is fighting's marquee division. This notion led Affliction to overspend in an effort to corner the market on those it judged to be the top heavyweights, all in the name of making the promotion a major player.

“This former Montreal club bouncer isn’t huge — he’s 5-10, 170 pounds — but it hardly matters. Check any Mixed Martial Arts ranking for his class and you’ll find GSP near the top. Marketers envision him as the sport’s big breakout star — he’s the first MMA guy to pimp Gatorade, for one thing — and his win over Thiago Alves at UFC 100 could very well be the fight that does it.

Former UFC light heavyweight Tim Boetsch will be back in the cage on Aug. 15 in a matchup against IFL veteran Aaron Stark at King of the Cage "Thunderstruck" in Everett, Washington.
In his UFC debut at UFC 81, Boetsch (8-3) became an immediate fan favorite with his dismantling of David Heath on ten days' notice. But one win and two losses later were enough for him to be handed his walking papers after UFC 96 in March.

When I spoke to Forrest Griffin about his upcoming showdown against Anderson Silva at UFC 101 on August 8, I got the sense that he wanted to talk about anything but that fight. Fine by me. The former UFC light heavyweight champion is one of the most personable and funny fighters in MMA.

Having suffered a severely broken hand in his rematch with Mike Brown at the beginning of June, Urijah Faber on Monday provided fines with an update on his healing progress via his Twitter account.
“The 4th metacarple is is completely healed. The 5th is filling in. Strength training on my hands starts today!” the former WEC champion posted.

It seems the stream of talent coming out of Colorado’s Ring of Fire event is ever-flowing, consistently producing some of the best young talent in the sport.
Latest to flow down the pipeline is Fabian Acuna, a fighter some call “The 155-pound Cung Le.”
After taking nearly six years off from the sport, Acuna returned to action in April, defeating James Martinez at Ring of Fire 34 in just over a minute-and-a-half.

WEC bantamweight champion Miguel Torres is looking for a fight, and it's nothing against his current opponent, Brian Bowles, but he believes a boxing champion needs to step up and compete in the true fighting art before he smack talks a sport that is sweeping the world.
Recently, former pound-for-pound boxing king Floyd Mayweather Jr., in an interview with CBS Sports, hounded the sport of MMA saying it was for "beer drinkers" and the reason the sport was created was because "there's no white fighters in boxing that's dominating." Torres, who proudly hails from a Hispanic background, is ready to prove Mayweather wrong and he's ready any time, any place.

The Florida-based Xtreme Fighting Championships will be the second U.S.-based MMA promotion to enter Germany, as the company has finalized plans for an event in Berlin on Dec. 12.
XFC officials today informed MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) that the organization has partnered with a German-based promotion to produce a series of events in Germany, Switzerland and Austria in 2009 and 2010.
The UFC was the first U.S.-based organization to visit Germany, promoting June's UFC 99 in Cologne.

The first two pieces of the scrambled puzzle left by Affliction's recent demise have fallen into place as Strikeforce light heavyweight champion Renato "Babalu" Sobral (35-8) will defend his title against Gegard Mousasi (25-2-1) on Aug. 15.
Sobral and Mousasi, who were originally scheduled to meet at the now-canceled "Affliction: Trilogy," will instead step into the cage at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, Calif., on the main card of "Strikeforce: Carano vs. Cyborg," which airs live on Showtime.
Mousasi will compete on the card with a new Strikeforce contract, Afromowitz said, and not as a loaned commodity from M-1.

According to MMA Junkie, the Nevada State Athletic Commission will be looking to fine tune their ruleset when they convene on August 17th. NSAC has provided a copy of the potential changes here. Among the changes, NSAC proposes to increase leniency with regards to length of bouts. Here's the text (bold indicates proposed change):

Ricardo Almeida has had a successful career competing as a middleweight, amassing a 10-3 professional record, but his UFC 101 bout against Kendall Grove will be the Renzo Gracie black belt's last in the 185-pound division. Following the Aug. 8 event at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia, Almeida will make the drop down to the welterweight class.

For the first time since the lightweights of season five, I'm really looking forward to the next season of The Ultimate Fighter. Part of it is the roster of fighters -- I can't help being intrigued by Kimbo Slice, but I'm more interested in the mix of established veterans and up and coming talent they've put together. I must admit the prospect of seeing several former pro and college football players ads to the excitement.

Mike Swick said Brock Lesnar was "probably the most hated man in MMA history." Jesse Ventura said he was "ashamed of his behavior" on "Larry King Live." And Mike Brown wondered if Lesnar's post-UFC 100 antics would attract "hillbilly fans" to MMA.

Fedor Emelianenko will be available to fight for the UFC – but only through a co-promotion, M-1 Global maintains.
Following the collapse of Affliction on Friday and as the result, the cancellation of Fedor’s next fight, M-1 Global on its website Sunday singled out the UFC to potentially foster a renewal of negotiations.